A Job Worth Getting Is A Job Worth Making

                                                              

With only 16% of Americans working their childhood dream job, according to a survey by salary.com, landing that perfect employment right out of the gate is probably not on too many peoples' horizons anymore.

Well, there are actually a couple ways to go about landing--or creating--that dream job. Keep reading if "up-to-the-task" is a compound adjective that describes you.

An insider's job

There's something to be said for long-term employment satisfaction, but what if you like your employer but not your current job?

When former global communications and brand manager Isha Cogborn looked around at The Dow Chemical Company, she didn't see any desks that she wanted to fill.

"If I was going to be there long-term, I had to be doing something I enjoyed where I was able to make a unique contribution," she said. "What was I bringing to the table that could make an impact on the company in a way that most others couldn't?"

Isha realized that her broadcasting degree would make her the perfect person to manage a new project called Diamond TV, the company's internal version of YouTube.

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Do New Businesses Hold The Key To Conquering Unemployment? 

                                                              

The U.S. economy is about as shaky as a wiener dog in a Christmas sweater-vest. Economic indicators aren't improving much, including the unemployment rate. For that to decrease, jobs need to be created, and entrepreneurs--people who start new businesses from scratch--could lead the pack to get it done.

A 2012 study by the Kauffman Foundation, an authority in entrepreneurial research, found a 14-year high in the number of Americans starting a business in 2010, but it remains to be seen whether this surge of entrepreneurs will make a difference on an economic scale, particularly when it comes to creating the number of jobs needed to put a nice thick coat on that shivering economic puppy.

From 1980 to 2005, businesses less than five years old accounted for nearly all net job growth in the U.S., according to a 2009 study by the Kauffman Foundation. However, excluding startups, new businesses (defined as one to five years old) accounted for only two-thirds of job creation in 2007, choosing to start with fewer employees and adding fewer people to the payroll than historic norms. Robert Litan, Kauffman Foundation vice president of Research and Policy, said "Historically, startups are the key to long-term employment growth… We won't fix our core unemployment problem in the United States until young businesses get back on track."
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The Repurpose Driven Life: Giving old items a new image

                                                              

Jake Ryder stared at the empty basement around him. Fresh from his parents' home, he lacked two essentials: furniture and money. He did, however, have a closetful of broken skateboards. So Ryder outfitted his apartment with a coffee table, couch and armchair--all entirely made from broken skateboard decks and parts. Chances are you've been--or will be--in Ryder's frugal shoes, with the chance to create your own reused utopia.

 

Perspective Shift

Since childhood, we've been taught to "reduce, reuse, recycle," and for good reason: in 2010 alone, Americans threw away about 250 million tons of garbage, nearly 4.5 pounds per person. Even though we recycled almost 65 million tons, recycling isn't a magic bullet; it still requires energy to turn a cereal box into usable materials again.

Enter "upcycling:" finding new value for something once thought to be disposable. Think messenger bags repurposed from old jeans, pop can tabs turned into jewelry, and pendant lights made out of root beer bottles.

"There's so much viable material out there, and no reason why we shouldn't tap into that," says Ryder, who sells upcycled skateboard furniture at his Etsy store, J Ryde Visuals. "We have a disposable culture. It's a powerful thing when we move it the other direction."
That direction is gaining momentum, especially in online marketplaces like Etsy or Hipcycle.

Dedicated to homemade wares, Etsy featured approximately 7,900 upcycled items in January 2010. Just one year later, those offerings had increased 379% to nearly 30,000 products.

Scavenging....

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Modern-Day Davy Crocketts

Entrepreneurs, the really successful ones anyway, are the latest American folk heroes. A bunch of modern-day Davy Crocketts charging out into the wild frontiers of, more often than not, tech and consumer gadgetry. They're constantly talked about on the news, profiled in magazines, and treated like rock stars. These men and women are the faces of a much larger system that includes colleges, investors, collaborators, and everyday working folk, but it's the digital frontiersmen that get the majority of the glory.

This hero worship makes sense in the context of America's infatuation with the so-called self-made man or woman. Entrepreneurs are the cream of America's bootstrappin' crop. They're businessmen and women who aren't content just to climb the corporate ladder, but strike out on their own to pursue personal visions. For a nation drip-fed the notion of personal liberty from the time we're born, creating our own business is about as land-of-the-free as it comes.

Driving the elevation of entrepreneurs to pantheon level is the system which has sprung up beneath them. Since 2000, Harvard has fostered and educated aspiring entrepreneurs through its Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (TECH). Stanford's also in on the game with its Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, started in 1996.

Boston and Silicon Valley are traditional hotbeds for entrepreneurs, but incubators designed to nurture budding entrepreneurs are all over the country, and you can get a business degree in entrepreneurship almost anywhere. Investors and venture capitalists, too, are lined up waiting to drop cash on the next billion-dollar business.

READ MORE:  http://www.brassmagazine.com/article/modern-day-davy-crocketts

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